


Under Duress

by Chicklet_Girl



Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-24
Updated: 2010-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-17 03:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chicklet_Girl/pseuds/Chicklet_Girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby gets a phone call from Tony, who's in trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Duress

**Author's Note:**

> Crackfic. It’s all **sinfulslasher** ’s fault. See, **di_elle** posted [promo pictures for 8x07](http://community.livejournal.com/no_tiva/157991.html#cutid1). Several comments later, I had been TOTALLY RAILROADED into writing this. I’ve been running around all weekend and didn’t have much writing time, so this was written in about an hour and a half when I got home from my knitting group today. Which is to say… it’s unbeta’d crackfic, written in 90 minutes. You’re going to have to hand-wave a lot of stuff. *g*

Abby sighs. This road construction is going to make her late, and Gibbs hates it when people are late, even just for a team lunch. Not that the team lunch had been his idea or anything, but he was going along with it for her sake. They’d been working cold cases for a week and a half, and so Abby had barely seen any of them. She’d been stuck doing work for the other teams. Not that they’re bad people or anything, they’re just not Gibbs and Tony and McGee and Ziva. Her phone rings and TONY pops up on the screen. “Hello, Tony,” she says in her flirtiest voice.

“Abs? I can’t…. you… late…”

“Tony, you’re breaking up, what did you say?”

“…Sears. See…” and the call ends. _Sears_! That’s Tony’s duress word!

Abby tries not to panic. She passes through the next intersection and pulls over, hitting #2 on her speed-dial, but Tony’s phone goes straight to voicemail. She hits #1, but Gibbs’s phone goes straight to voicemail, too. This is seriously not good. She takes a few deep breaths and hits #3.

“McGee.”

“McGee! I just got a call from Tony and he used his duress word!”

“Are you sure?” He sounds entirely too skeptical.

“Yes! Can you track his phone?”

She hears rustling in the background, and McGee says, “Yeah, I’m still at home, and I have the software on my laptop. I’m putting the phone down for a sec.”

“Okay.” Abby bites her lip while she listens to McGee typing.

“Abby?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got a sporadic signal that keeps cutting out. It looks like there’s something wrong with one or two of the cell-phone towers in Alexandria. The closest I can figure out is that he’s somewhere near the Landmark Mall.”

“Why would someone kidnap Tony and take him to the Landmark Mall? He never shops there!”

“Abby, calm down. Just meet me at the exterior entrance to Macy’s, all right? I can be there in about twenty minutes, depending on traffic.”

“Okay. Do you want me to call Ziva?”

“I’ll do it. Just don’t go searching the mall by yourself. If someone carjacked Tony or if they’re making him get money from an ATM, they might be armed.”

“Got it.” She pulls out and takes a right to get to the freeway. It takes her about fifteen minutes to get there and park, and she walks to the Macy’s entrance as fast as her boots will let her. She stands to the side of the door, looking for McGee and shrugging off the stares she gets from the customers entering and exiting the store.

Finally, McGee comes up, a little red in the face. “Abby, I did the search again once I got here and I’ve got it narrowed down better. It looks like he’s actually in Sears.”

“What? I thought Tony broke out in hives if he went in there.”

“I don’t know. We’ll go look for him once Ziva gets here.”

Just then, Ziva comes jogging up to them, looking avid and ready to go. “Tim, you said Tony is in Sears?”

“Yeah, it’s at the other end of the mall. Don’t take out your gun or your badge yet. We’ll have to figure out his situation before we can declare ourselves and try to neutralize whatever’s going on.”

They go through Macy’s and start toward Sears, trying to be alert and look casual. Abby tries to stay focused on Tony so she won’t freak out. It takes a few minutes to traverse the entire length of the mall, but finally they’re at the entrance to Sears.

“Should we split up?” Ziva asks, looking at McGee.

McGee looks inside the store. “Let’s stick together for now,” he says. “We’ll start on this level and work our way up if we don’t see him. Do a clockwise perimeter until we get back here.”

They go into Sears and take the first aisle to the left. They’re surrounded by washers, dryers, and electronics until they go right to continue following the perimeter of the store and find themselves in the hardware section.

“We’re going to be late, boss. Does the size of the chisel really matter?”

Abby grabs McGee’s sleeve and whispers into his ear. “That’s Tony! He’s in the next aisle!”

“Yeah, I heard him, Abby,” McGee whispers, all but rolling his eyes. “He doesn’t really sound like he’s under duress.”

From the next aisle, they hear Gibbs’s voice. “Yes, the size of the chisel matters because I need to make a route of a specific size. When you don’t use a power router, the width of the chisel is important.”

McGee glares at Abby and goes to the next aisle. “Everything all right here?” he asks, and Abby sees Tony jump.

“McGee! What are you doing here?” Tony catches sight of Abby and Ziva behind McGee. “Okay, this is a little weird.”

Gibbs looks at all of them from further down the aisle. He’s carrying some packets of sandpaper and a chisel in its paper packaging. “What’s going on?”

Abby is totally confused. “Tony called me and used his duress word, so I called McGee.”

“Duress word?” Gibbs looks just as confused as Abby feels. Tony looks… weirdly guilty, all of a sudden.

“Yeah,” Abby says. “The call kept breaking up, but I heard him say Sears. That’s his duress word.”

Gibbs drops the chisel and slaps the back of Tony’s head. “No, Tony’s duress word is Vancouver.”

Abby points at Tony. “You told me it was Sears!” she says accusingly, giving his arm one of her best punch-buggy punches.

Tony yelps and rubs his bicep. “I think I told you I wanted to change my duress word to Sears while you were setting up a database run or something. You were a little distracted. Also, seriously, _ow_ ,” he says, rubbing his arm some more.

Gibbs laughs and says, “He’s been bugging me for years to make Sears his duress word, but you need a good reason to change your assigned one.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t ask you to tell me exactly what Tony said,” McGee says to Abby. “If you’d told me you thought his duress word was Sears, I could have set you straight and we wouldn’t have come out here hell-bent for leather.”

“‘Hell-bent for leather’? Probie, have you been watching too many movies?”

Ziva laughs, “Oh, that’s wealthy.”

“Rich, Ziva,” Tony says, “The phrase is ‘That’s rich.’”

Abby speaks up again. “Forget that. Why are you out here with Gibbs, anyway? It’s not close at all to the restaurant.” She watches Tony and Gibbs closely, because she’s had her suspicions for awhile, but there’s never been any proof.

It’s only because she’s focusing on them that she can see Gibbs and Tony exchange a quick look before Tony comes over and takes her arm. “They had to turn off the water in my building to fix a plumbing thing, so I crashed on Gibbs’s couch last night,” he says, leading her to the main aisle. “Should we all head to lunch? Boss, you have everything you need?” She lets him change the subject, because she just got all the proof she requires.

Gibbs bends down to pick up the chisel he dropped before. “Yep. Just let me check out and we can go.”

Abby catches Ziva’s eye and says, “I’m sorry for making you come out here and everything.”

“It is fine, Abby,” Ziva says. “I needed to buy some new cargo pants anyway.”

Tony’s wince is so pronounced Abby can practically hear it.


End file.
